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The book "Salah Ben Youssef et les youssefistes: Au tournant de l'indépendance tunisienne, 1955–1956" by M'hamed Oualdi explores the rise and fall of the Youssefist movement in the Tunisian national movement. The author focuses on Salah Ben Youssef's leadership position in the Neo-Destour party, his expulsion from the party, and the support he garnered across Tunisia. The book also delves into the violent suppression of the movement after its official ban in 1956. The author draws on French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and French military archives for information. The book offers insights into Ben Youssef's background and his vision for Tunisia as a constitutional monarchy. The author questions why Tunisia did not evolve into a multiparty state like Morocco. However, the book could have benefited from further analysis of the rivalry between Bourguiba and Ben Youssef and the perspectives of other key figures. The book provides a useful chronology of events but lacks an index. [Extracted from the article]

"Les camps de regroupement en Algérie: Une histoire des déplacements forcés (1954–1962)" by Fabien Sacriste is a meticulously researched history of the forced relocation of Algeria's rural population by the French military between 1954 and 1962. The author examines the bureaucratic infighting and difficult relationships between French military and civil authorities during this period. The book also explores the negative connotations associated with the term "camp de regroupement" and the government's response to the displacement of Algerians. The author sheds light on the relationship between military tactics and modernization efforts in Algeria, as well as the long-lasting impact of the forced relocations. [Extracted from the article]

"Algérie 1962: Une histoire populaire" by Malika Rahal is a book that aims to provide a comprehensive and nuanced account of the year of Algerian independence. The author, an accomplished historian, gathers the recollections of ordinary people, both Europeans and Muslims, to shed light on events and issues that are often overlooked or exaggerated in standard histories. Rahal draws on a wide range of sources, including memoirs, testimonies, and official archives, to present a balanced and diverse perspective. The book explores themes such as violence, body/bodies, spaces, and time, offering a deeper understanding of the complexities of the period. Overall, "Algérie 1962: Une histoire populaire" provides a valuable and insightful exploration of the year of Algerian independence. [Extracted from the article]

Raw neoliberalism is usually associated with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, but Davis discovers its French antecedents in the Office Algérien d'Action Économique et Touristique (OFALAC), founded in 1931 to promote "the new Algeria". The Vichy regime further promoted OFALAC's modernisation by proposing that Algeria industrialise. Davis also points to striking continuities between prewar modernisation efforts, wartime Vichy regime technocrats, and postwar economic plans crowned by the Constantine Plan of 1959. [Extracted from the article]

The crisis of Muslim religious discourse: The necessary shift from Plato to Kant: by Lahouari Addi, translated from the French by Bonnie Einsiedel, London & New York, Routledge, 2022, 222 pp., £120/$160 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-032-12964-8 For instance, Hasan Hanafi, who chaired Cairo University's philosophy department for many years and offered an Islamic interpretation of Hegel, did not qualify for Addi because he was just turning religion into ideology, not internalising Islam. In this sequel to his 2017 I Radical Arab Nationalism and Political Islam i ,[1] Lahouari Addi fulfils his promise to explain why a shift from Plato to Kant is necessary for a full reformation of Islam.[2] It may seem a stretch to associate medieval Islam with Plato and a fully reformed Islam with Immanuel Kant, but the exercise can be intellectually invigorating.[3] Professor Addi has written a brilliant history of ideas with philosophic depth like Hegel's I History of Philosophy, i which he quotes (148-150). [Extracted from the article]

Most of the questions organising Alcaraz's history of the war would seem of greater interest to readers focused on France than on Algeria. This work is a worthy sequel to the critical history of memorials associated with Algeria's war for independence written by the author of the book's preface (Pervillé [3]). Tewfik's forced retirement in 2016 had evidently been a political smokescreen.[5] Alcaraz described the many aspects of the Algerian war brought to light in the I hirak i that official memorials had supposedly occluded. [Extracted from the article]

Based on the published interviews of a sample of 33 former student leaders and members of the Union Générale des Etudiants Musulmans Algériens (UGEMA, 1955–1963), along with private interviews or other data collected about an additional 30, this article traces the brief history of the Algerian Revolution’s only autonomous NGO and the consequent patterns of cooperation and competition over subsequent years. The sample represents a broad political spectrum of Algeria’s recently retired civilian elite. It is biased towards students who eventually achieved high office. Elected leadership positions in UGEMA seem to have anticipated subsequent promotions and co-optation by Boumedienne’s regime (1965–1978) more than by Ben Bella’s (1962–1965). But unwilling or unable in the course of their careers to act in concert, this French-educated elite never acquired real authority. Its representative organ, UGEMA, was effectively ‘suicided’ in 1961, the summer before external military forces outgunned those of Algeria’s Provisional Government and seized power. For better or worse, UGEMA’s potential civilian leadership remained hostage to competing military factions. It was also seriously divided, its captains of industry opposed to Arabizing educators. Shutting down its only autonomous intermediary left independent Algeria with a weak, politically impoverished state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Algeria's agonies of economic adjustment and chronic civil war are excessive by Mediterranean standards. Algeria illustrates the pernicious problems that scholars often ascribe to oil rents: a distorted economy, civil strife and authoritarian government. The 'resource curse' literature suggests that such economies suffer from a sort of geological predetermination: mineral wealth is a form of original sin. This essay examines the connection between oil wealth and Algeria's descent into turmoil in the 1990s and compares Algeria with neighbouring Tunisia, which shares many characteristics but is less dependent on oil. It concludes that the original sin was not hydrocarbons but a primitive form of French colonialism. Before oil revenues took off in the 1970s, Algeria's trajectory was conditioned already by the intensity of the colonial occupation, the trauma of national liberation, the destruction of civil society and political intermediaries, and a lingering identity crisis. The state remained alien and bereft of legitimacy - at best, a source of rents for political profiteers. Oil wealth may have compounded Algeria's difficulties, but the decimation of the country's intermediaries better explains how the problems arose and why they are now so acute compared with neighbouring countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]